In December, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched a cargo ship, carrying an experimental ‘space junk collector’ on board along with supplies for the ISS. Built with the help of a fishnet company Nitto Seimo Co, the space agency was hoping to collect decades-old satellite debris from the Earth’s orbit but the mission has been confirmed to be a failure.
This embarrassing development is another major setback for Japan as well as the space community. It comes on the heels of their failure to place their SS-520-4 rocket into Earth’s orbit last month. And we still have to fear the two million pieces of junk floating around our planet in a constant circle. It can either damage one of the numerous working satellites placed in the orbit or burn while falling back to Earth.
Coming back to the space junk collector, the scientists at JAXA had launched the same with the aim of testing an experimental setup. This is said to include an electrodynamic “tether,” which was required to slow down debris and bring it down to a lower orbit with electromagnetic force. This would cause the same hazardous junk to eventually enter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up harmlessly. It would also not pose a risk to mankind as it would be burned in the atmosphere and not crash into the planet.
The tethers, made of steel and aluminum, are said to have malfunctioned during the first test of space junk collector aboard the automated cargo ship Kounotori. JAXA, in an official statement, said that there was a mechanism to release the tether but the scientist hit a snag at the very first step. They couldn’t even deploy the cable and technicians were unable to fix the mechanism of the cargo ship from Earth. Thus, it has now been reported that Kounotori 6 cargo transporter burned up in the atmosphere while returning back to the planet.
Commenting on the failure of this mission, leading researcher Koichi Inoue said,
We believe the tether did not get released. It is certainly disappointing that we ended the mission without completing one of the main objectives.
This is certainly a disappointing development for the space ecosystem as there is an immediate need for an effective space garbage removal system. Japanese scientists are known to innovate and experiment, but the failure of this project is a major setback. Currently, there are an estimated 170 million pieces of junk smaller than 1 cm (0.4 in), about 670,000 debris 1–10 cm, and around 29,000 larger debris in orbit. It includes everything from discarded tools, satellite parts, debris, paint flakes, and even frozen coolant from nuclear-powered satellites.
